Happy Equinox all! It’s spring, the time to be fecund and see what winter’s fallow has been incubating. I’m doing my best to remember that I am not in control or in charge of squat; to see what the Universe will grow in me rather than imposing my own wants onto what is. The more I’m able to be in the now, the easier that is to do. Staying in the present is a lot of work. My body does a good job of staying here; the rest of me…not so much.
What is taking me out of present? Sometimes it’s a fear fueled projection from the catastrophe factory in my head. Often it’s hope that takes me out of now. Not a surprise. I first noticed this friction between “hope” and “now” in my twenties. Working my
way back from an addiction showed me I don’t get to be anywhere else until I own where I am now. It took many rounds of vaulting off into the future, to where I wished I was and hoped I would end up, for me to understand what I was doing. Each time I got off into the future, I neglected the present. I rendered myself powerless to make any choices in the present that might support where I wanted to go. Since then, I often refer to hope as the luxury I choose not to afford.
By nature, hope is about something that could or might happen. Hope is focused on the future. When I surrender to hope, I am out of the present. Even if I hope I don’t spill the ice tea I’m pouring, and I’ll know whether or not that happened in 10 seconds when the glass is full, my hope is a few seconds ahead of now.
These days my flights of hope often begin when I need to schedule something next week or a couple months from now. I put the dates down in my calendar. My mind offers up a little day dream about what I hope happens on those dates. Without realizing I’m doing it, I get attached to that outcome.
As I’ve watched myself drift in and out of now over the past couple weeks, I’ve glimpsed a facet of this process that I haven’t clearly seen before. My hope contains a strand of anxiety and not all of those jitters are excitement. When I let in hope, I open the door to its shadow – fear. Duality is inherent in nature. That’s just the way it is.
We usually think of disappointment being the flipside of hope. But I feel disappointed until I don’t get what I hoped for. That feeling is based on the outcome of my hope being realized or not. Long before decisive moment, my hope comes with a fear of not getting what I want.
So it’s not just hope that keeps taking me out of now. It’s a different sort of fear based projection…and a kind of sneaky one as it arrives looking like something else entirely.
Last summer I read an article, Eight Fearless Questions, where Margaret Wheatley talks about this relationship between hope and fear:
“There's something very interesting to understand about hope. That is, that hope and fear are one. Any time we're hopeful, we don't know it necessarily, but we're bringing in fear. Because fear is the constant, unavoidable companion of hope. What this simply means is that I hope for a certain outcome and I'm afraid I won't get it. I hope for a certain result and I'm fearful it won't happen. This is the way that hope and fear are wedded together. There is a place called, "beyond hope and fear." It is to be free from hope, so that we are free from fear.”
Although this paragraph stuck with me, I couldn’t quite get my head around the idea of being hope free. Totally ditching hope leaves me with what? Hopelessness? Despair? Pessimism? Now that I’m seeing another layer of how hope works, maybe not.
Hope is an emotion. The feeling can take me out of now momentarily. What really catapults me off into next month or next year is the story I come up with about the hope and how attached I get to that outcome. The fear is all about the story and the outcome. The fear story will strand me in next week or next year over and over if I let it.
The story I make up inevitably focuses my hope on a specific event, outcome or possibility. Once my brain gets ahold of hope it’s no longer an unfiltered emotion. It’s hope for something. As soon as my hope is fixated on something specific not only does the fear take me out of now, I begin to forget that I’m not in charge.
My attachment to the story leads me into convincing myself that I if I do things just right, I can make that outcome happen. That one is: a) a big fat illusion and b) guaranteed to toss me even further out of now.
Moving beyond hope is about detaching from imaginary outcomes, no matter how much I want them, and staying in surrender. I can feel hope without making up a reason for it. I can feel hopeful without attaching it to a specific outcome or to any outcome. Hope with no story lets me stay in the present.
Hope is an emotion. The feeling can take me out of now momentarily. What really catapults me off into next month or next year is the story I come up with about the hope and how attached I get to that outcome. The fear is all about the story and the outcome. The fear story will strand me in next week or next year over and over if I let it.
The story I make up inevitably focuses my hope on a specific event, outcome or possibility. Once my brain gets ahold of hope it’s no longer an unfiltered emotion. It’s hope for something. As soon as my hope is fixated on something specific not only does the fear take me out of now, I begin to forget that I’m not in charge.
My attachment to the story leads me into convincing myself that I if I do things just right, I can make that outcome happen. That one is: a) a big fat illusion and b) guaranteed to toss me even further out of now.
Moving beyond hope is about detaching from imaginary outcomes, no matter how much I want them, and staying in surrender. I can feel hope without making up a reason for it. I can feel hopeful without attaching it to a specific outcome or to any outcome. Hope with no story lets me stay in the present.
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